Grafton struggles with lessons, technology, lunch in first week of online schools
Superintendent of Schools James Cummings speaks to the Grafton School Committee in a meeting held via Zoom. PHOTO BY JENNIFER LORD PALUZZI 
A laptop look at School Committee members, school officials, and curious onlookers during the meeting held via Zoom. PHOTO BY JENNIFER LORD PALUZZI 
School Committee Chairperson Laura Often asks for opinions. PHOTO BY JENNIFER LORD PALUZZI
The Grafton schools had only a week, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, to bring their students’ education online.
They needed age-appropriate lesson plans. Internet access for students and, in multiple families, computers. Families were not always technology-savvy.
Fittingly, the School Committee met Tuesday in the same medium in which Grafton students are now taught: online, in a Zoom multi-user video chat, with concerned parents looking over their shoulders.
“I can’t believe we’ve been doing remote learning for a week,” Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings said. “It feels like a year.”
More than 100 Chromebooks were distributed to students around Grafton, several by Cummings himself. What he discovered during the visits surprised him: students whose parents did not speak English, homes without Internet access.
“It’s something every school district is dealing with,” Cummings said. While several companies have stepped up to offer more affordable and even free packages “the problem has been the actual implementation… actually getting the companies to go out and make it happen, across the state, is the issue.”
The school district is also working with Whitsons, its food provider, to offer packaged lunches at the Millbury Street Elementary School to students on a free and reduced school lunch program. The service is offered Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., curbside at the rear of the school, with some deliveries offered, said Daniel Gale, director of finance.
While the program has been welcomed, Gale is concerned that supplies may run out if school closings continue well past April 7.
“At some point, they’re going to run out of food,” Gale said. “Do we stop giving food to needy families? We don’t have money encumbered for that.”
The question of money — already the subject of a proposed $4 million override — extends to summer school as well. While funds are set aside for summer school, it is unknown how many more students will require additional help as a result of the pandemic.
Assistant Superintendent Tracey Calo said the district will roll out another week of new online activities for students next week, as well as archiving this week’s lessons.
“To ask teachers to create these kind of activities almost overnight… it’s incredible,” Calo said.
